


Winged Cupid, Painted Blind

by novelogical (writingmonsters)



Category: The Alienist (TV)
Genre: Love Confessions, M/M, Secret Admirer, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 11:39:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17786678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingmonsters/pseuds/novelogical
Summary: Valentines from a not-so-secret admirer lead to some revelations for John and Laszlo.





	Winged Cupid, Painted Blind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [misanthropiclycanthrope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/misanthropiclycanthrope/gifts).



> Both of the messages printed in the cards are from actual valentines designed by Esther Howland who popularized Valentine’s Day cards in America.

Laszlo hardly knows what to make of it when he finds the card, nestled in the midst of professional correspondences, invitations he will of course decline, and the latest issue from the _American Journal of Psychology._    

It is one of the garish Howland cards that are so popular now, all lace-edging and an elaborate pastiche of paper cupids. There is a poem printed within and, below it, an inscription in blue-black ink.    

_REMEMBER ME_

_I would not that my_

_form should rise_

_before thee in thy hours_

_of glee._

_But when thou think’st_

_of friends sincere_

_I wish thee to re-_

_member me._

And written in a loose, looping hand:       

 _I fear you sometimes, my dearest Laszlo. I frightens me that you might look at me with your bright, burning gaze and know the depths of my feelings for you. I think I have loved you long before I ever realized it_.    

It is unsigned.    

Laszlo turns the card over in his hands, tracing the texture of the paper lace. The breath is shallow in his chest, tremulous and tight with wondering. _The depths of my feelings for you._ Who would write such words? Who, possibly, could write of love in the face of all his sharp-edged defenses, the biting wreckage that he had shored up around his heart to guard against such things as _love_.    

There is no postage.    

“Stevie?” Laszlo raises his voice, afraid of the way it cracks along the edges.    

He is all long-limbs and boundless energy appearing in the doorway, the smile sitting crooked upon his face. “Need somethin’, Doctor Kreizler?”    

Laszlo, caught on the particular curve of the ‘f’, the loop in the ‘g’ -- a niggling recognition at the back of his mind -- stutters to life like an automaton. He sets aside the card, slipping it beneath the papers atop his desk away from prying eyes, strangely protective. “When the post arrived today, you did not happen to see anyone else delivering letters?”    

A frown. Stevie shakes his head firmly. “Not what I saw, just the regular postman. Why d’you ask?”    

Why, indeed. Laszlo waves him off, feigning nonchalance. It is nothing, and it is everything. “No matter. Thank you, Stevie.”

“Course.”       

When he is alone Laszlo sinks heavy into the chair at his desk. It seems so familiar in a way, speaking of a long intimacy… The card, face-up on the surface of the desk, mocks him with its bright flowers and rosy cupids. He traces the gilt lettering with hesitating, uncertain fingers. Opens the card to trace the written lines inside.    

It is nothing. A prank couched in garland and roses. He will not let anonymous sentiments be _something_.

There is no point to dwelling on it.

And yet, in the soft black night with sleep encroaching on the edges of his mind, the words rise up and sketch themselves against the back of his eyelids. He knows that handwriting. In the deepest parts of him, Laszlo is sure of the note’s author.       

The answer comes in the fog of his dreams. Strong, clever hands to tease over his skin. Smudges of charcoal and the weight of cigarette smoke, the tang of cologne. A gentle kiss.    

Laszlo bolts upright in the bed, soaked to the skin and clammy with sweat. The ghost of the kiss -- that familiar, insolent mouth -- lingers against his lips. Leaves him trembling.    

It can’t be possible.    

What had Freud written about dreaming, after all? Wish-fulfillment. A manifestation of subconscious desires. It is only Laszlo’s own, foolish hopes. The note can mean nothing.    

And yet…    

And yet.    

There is another card two days later, waiting when Laszlo carries in the mail and he is frozen in the foyer, the rest of the letters in their envelopes slipping from his grasp, scattering across the floorboards.    

He has to know.    

Taking the card carefully by its edges, careful not to disturb the paper roses, Laszlo heads blindly for his study. He is almost certain. But...    

Laszlo has learned well from the Isaacsons, made a careful study of their methods. A few delicate brushes and a tin of Lycopodium powder and somewhere on this card there are fingerprints. Two of them, perfect and stark against the white paper. His hands shake. The tin of powder spills across the surface of the desk.    

Impossible. _Impossible_.    

They had wanted a record, to differentiate their fingerprints from potential evidence. There are delicate glass slides kept safe upon the shelf, among the scientific ephemera. Sets of carefully labeled fingerprints.    

 _Howard, S._ and _Isaacson, L._ and _M_., and _Kreizler, L._   

And…    

 _Moore, J._ It is a match. The left index and middle fingers.    

_May friendship’s constant kiss be thine_

_From this sweet day of valentine._

Laszlo draws a shallow, trembling breath. And there, in John’s -- of course, how had he not realized it sooner? -- untidy penmanship, the damning tenderness of it:

_I would kiss you, if I thought you might let me. Draw the stubbornness from your mouth and hold you close and, if I could, I would capture every single one of your smiles. I know it seems foolish, but all you would have to do is ask and I would offer you my whole heart._

Some unbearable, incomprehensible sound constricts in Laszlo’s throat. Presses itself against his lips. He might sob. He might laugh.

He feels as though he is cracking apart.

And what was it he had said, so many months ago? The two of them swaying in the train’s compartment, on their way to uncover Japheth Dury’s secrets.    

_Love isn’t a mystery any more than cholera._

Foolishness. How wrong he had been, so arrogant and smug in his self-confidence. It is a mystery, an impossible thing to understand. How is it that this could happen? That John Moore -- bright with life and indulgence and all things good in the world -- could love a man like him with all his bitter wounds and broken edges. That Laszlo could love him and, dare he imagine it, be loved in return.    

_Cholera is a disease._

Love is a disease. Laszlo is certain of this, if nothing else -- he is infected and it is terminal.    

The damning fingerprints. The handwriting he has known since those long-distant days at Harvard. The squeeze of emotion that threatens to crush his heart behind his ribs.    

He makes a decision, scribbles down a quick missive.    

“Stevie?”    

A thunder of footsteps down the stairs. Always glad for the chance to escape his studies, Stevie pokes his head through the doorway with a curious look.    

“Make sure this note is delivered to Mister Moore post-haste.” Laszlo hands off the note and, though it is no more than an invitation -- the same words he has send a thousand times before, requesting John’s presence -- this time something cracks in his chest. Shatters. A portion of his heart broken off to follow the note to John.    

When Stevie is gone, Laszlo paces the study, doesn’t know what to do with himself and his gibbering, tumultuous brain. _I think I have loved you long before ever I realized it_. He digs the strong fingers of his left hand into his ruined arm -- bright pinpoints of pain. Clarity.    

What happens now?

The moment the runner appears with the note -- “from a Doctor Krezzler, for you” -- John is sure he feels the world cease turning, the breath stolen from his lungs. Does he know? Has he guessed? What has he written -- a gentle rebuttal, a love letter of his own? Is he furious? Disgusted?

Could he possibly love John in return?    

Of course, he is foolish to hope. It is merely an invitation to dinner, and Laszlo does not know.    

Nonetheless, John dresses for the evening and he goes.    

Barely do his knuckles graze the front door of 283 East 17th Street before the door is flung open and Laszlo is there, framed in the entrance. He is shifting and unsettled, his eyes incapable of meeting John’s for more than a moment on the step, and he is not at all dressed for dinner at Delmonico’s.    

His smile is tenuous. Awkward. “John.”   

“ _Laszlo_.” John looks him up and down, rocking back onto his heels. “I thought…?”

A grimace. “I fear I was not entirely honest in my intentions.” And then, realizing that John is stranded on his front porch, he steps aside, gesturing. “Please. Come in?”

Laszlo looks like he might go to pieces right there in the foyer, and John feels like he will burst with the need to confess. To ask.

What on earth is happening here?

“Laszlo, wait.” He cannot continue like this. Laszlo stops short, blinking at him with wide eyes in the dim entryway as John rifles through the pockets of his greatcoat. “Before anything else passes between us -- you ought to read this.”

Delicate fingers pluck the envelope from his grip. One last valentine. And Laszlo smiles, genuine and soft. “There is no need.”    

He knows what it will say. _I love you._

“I…”    

And this is where it all falls apart. Where Laszlo rebukes him, tells John that he cannot love him -- that it is a perversion, madness, impossible. That John should not entertain such delusions…    

Instead, with his jasper eyes warm and shining, Laszlo steps in close. Careful, hesitating, he reaches for John, lets his fingertips ghost along the shaved-smooth angle of his jaw. And, lifting himself up onto his toes, Laszlo gathers every scrap of courage within himself to kiss John. A fragile, tenuous brush of lips along the corner of his mouth.

John staggers beneath the weight of it -- this delicate thing that blooms between them. Captures Laszlo in his arms. And they are both trembling, breathless.

It is a moment before he can find the words. “I don’t…? How did you --?”

“ _John_.” A golden spark of amusement in Laszlo’s eyes and he is still clinging to the last vestiges of composure, still just barely held together while John feels himself flying apart and John wants to kiss the last of the sanity from him. “I have known you over twenty years and you think I do not know your handwriting?” And then his brilliant eyes slide sideways. “And, perhaps I examined the second card for your fingerprints.”

 _Of course_. There could never be any fooling a scientist of Kreizler’s calibre. John cannot help but laugh. “I should have known.”    

Suddenly, Laszlo is shy, a flush crawling across his cheeks. “Why now?” Looking down, he finds the fingers of his good hand tracing the line of John’s lapel of their own accord, unsteady with adrenaline and a rush of nerves. _Why me_? “After all these years…?”    

John captures Laszlo’s face in the cradle of his hands, golden eyes solemn. Intent. “After everything this past year -- the investigation, Dury -- I have been so afraid to risk our friendship, Laszlo. I never expected you might share my feelings. But, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least _try_.”

He strokes his thumbs against the soft rasp of Laszlo’s beard, and Laszlo remembers the way that John had looked at Julia Pratt a lifetime ago, when they were both so young. There had not been half the tenderness, half the fierce adoration in his gaze then as there is when he studies Laszlo’s face now.    

And Laszlo feels his heart shatter, remold itself. He loves him, so very much. “You have been a part of me for the greater part of my life, John. I had thought you so essential -- I never thought… did not consider it was something more.” He licks his lips, nervous, hesitating even now to ask. “You wrote, in the Valentine’s…”

“I wrote a great many things,” John reminds him, tender. He will not tell Laszlo how many pages were discarded, crumpled up and torn to pieces before he could get the words quite right.

“You would kiss me,” Laszlo breathes, his whole body electric, alive with emotion. “If I would allow it.”

“Yes.” And then there is no space left between them, John folds Laszlo into his arms, his breath a ghost against Laszlo’s trembling, cupid’s bow mouth.

“Please.”

John kisses him, swallows down the gasp that shivers its way up from Laszlo’s core, drags his hands through his hair, over the swell of his shoulders and the narrow span of his back. And Laszlo leans into him, presses close enough to share John’s skin, his fingers clenching and curling at the nape of John’s neck.

The last wall between them falls away.


End file.
